Plath and Hughes scaffold PDF

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Scaffold for a Module A essay on Plath and Hughes...

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“A comparative study of the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes illuminates both the connection between the poets and their dissonant perspectives.” Intro: A comparative study of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel (1962) and Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters (1999) illuminates their predominantly dissonant perspectives on their context, although at times displaying the connection between the poets. Plath’s ‘Daddy’ and ‘A Birthday Present’ establish her desire for freedom from the controlling influence of the men in her life and oppressive patriarchal expectations, which caused her psychological anguish. This lack of freedom compromised her artistically, as well as restricting her freedom to make decisions about her life Hughes reimagines these poems in ‘The Shot’ and ‘Red’, responding that Plath’s misery was not sparked by the controlling men in her life, but rather by a morbid obsession with her late father, which drove her to hold unrealistic expectations for the men around her and develop an inability to see the wider consequences of her actions. Despite their dissonant perspectives, both connect in the need to express their personal perspective on their respective motivations. Topic: Plath is critical of her connection to both Hughes and the men in her life, asserting the need to liberate herself from patriarchal expectations in order to self-actualise  Context: Plath’s father Otto died when she was eight, rendering her infatuated with his memory and burdening her with a lifelong desire for a connection to him.  Plath alludes to this contextual influence in “Black shoe/ In which I have lived like a foot for thirty years, poor and white,” using simile to establish her entrapment in her childhood perception of her father, resulting in attempts to conform to the patriarchal expectations of a good daughter  Plath adopts the spiritual caricature of a Jew, “gipsy ancestress… weird luck…I may be a bit of a Jew”, formulating her own identity by labelling her father as the oppressor, a Nazi, “Luftwaffe… Aryan eye… panzer-man”. This intertwines their relationship with a post-war anxiety context, emphasising her feeling of abandonment by her father and the subsequent trauma and grief she was left with.  Plath’s extends Otto’s vitriolic Nazi imagery onto Hughes in “A man in black with a Meinkampf look” expressing the recurrence of controlling men in her life, further highlighting her perception of a patriarchal society  With her assertive tone in “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard I’m through” Plath has finally freed herself of the demands of tradition that restrict her to patriarchal expectations. Thus, Plath depicts her victimisation by the patriarchy as a result of the confining memory of her father that left her in an unstable mental state. Topic: Whereas Plath argues that the death of her father left her victim to an oppressive patriarchy, in ‘The Shot’ Hughes argues that her obsession with her father left her with unrealistic expectations of the men around her, resulting in her feeling of disempowerment.  Context: Following Plath’s suicide, Hughes became a target of public backlash, blamed for her suicide.  ‘The Shot’ can be interpreted as a corrective narrative, responding to Plath’s slandering accusations against men; “Ordinary Jocks became gods-deified by your infatuation”, the metaphor characterising Plath as a fanatic, unfairly transferring her obsession with her father onto the men she dated.  Hughes further argues with an extended metaphor “Your daddy had been aiming you at God When his death touched the trigger” that Otto’s death set her on an unstoppable trajectory to suicide, and that he was powerless to prevent her self-destructive actions  Furthermore, Hughes establishes how Plath’s infatuation resulted in the men around her becoming metaphorically, “too mortal to take it” as the nature of her relationships were ingenuine, solely existing to replace her father  Hughes furthers his dissonant perspective: “Till your real target Hid behind me. Your Daddy”, referencing her childish use of ‘Daddy’ alluding to Plath’s own perception of her father.  This can be justified by Plath’s quote “if I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two”, metaphorically admitting that Hughes’ is a conduit to her father Thus, despite agreeing that Hughes’ purpose in their relationship was a tether to Plath’s father, overall, Hughes collides, arguing that her oscillating, obsessive nature was to blame for her downfall.

Topic: In ‘A Birthday Present’, Plath portrays how she perceives that the only escape to self-acclamation was through suicide  Context: During the 1950’s, despite many women’s desire for motherhood, many, including Plath, felt conflicted between this patriarchal expectation and the longing for independence and equality.  Plath echoes this sentiment in the personification of death: “When I am quiet at cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking”, where her suicidal thoughts arise as she questions her confinement to domestic duties.  Plath’s alludes to the way she’s constantly “Adhering to rules, rules, rules”, the repetition symbolising how the patriarchal expectations of her mid-century context were so rigid that she internalised them, reinforcing her perception of entrapment  Plath’s initial rhetorical question “What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful” now reveals the extended metaphor of the ‘veil’ as the barrier between life and death: “Only let down the veil… If it were death” reinforcing how her initial confliction between the meaning of the veil, marriage or death, has been decided.  This decision is reflected in the imagery “Let the knife not carve, but enter” valuing death as “pure and clean as the cry of a baby”, associating birth with death, characterising suicide as a process of renewal and a route to personal and artistic freedom Thus, through her desire for personal autonomy through suicide, Plath asserts her desire for freedom from rigid patriarchal expectations. Topic: Whereas Plath’s portrays her desire for death as an escape from crippling societal expectations, in ‘Red’, Hughes argues that this desire selfishly destroyed their relationship and family as she failed to recognise the wider consequences of her actions  Context: In Plath’s earlier poems, she aligns the colour red with love and vitality, ‘her life blood’  Hughes view resonates with this, “Red was your colour” although reimagining her values in the rhetorical question “Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead” characterising red as a symbol of her self-induced suffering due to her desire for death, sparked by her father’s early passing  Hughes perception of the colour red conflicts with Plath’s, and is seen as destructive and intrusive: “When you had your way finally our room was red”, the symbolic intimacy of the bedroom now tainted by her death wish, positioning himself as a victim of Plath’s overbearing personality.  This portrayal of the damaged intimacy reimagines Plath’s position as a victim of male abuse in ‘Birthday Letters’: “must you kill what you can?”, instead as actively in the disintegration of their marriage  Hughes melancholically posits that “Blue was better for you… folded your pregnancy” the blue motif representing his view that embracing her domestic role was the path to freedom and individuality  In “But the jewel you lost was blue”, his regretful tone displays that despite Hughes’ overall dissonant response to Plath’s accusations he displays remorse for her suicide and that their colours, symbolically communicated their dissonant perspectives Overall, Hughes shows dissonance, responding that Plath’s suicide was unnecessary and that it destroyed their peaceful domestic life, although displaying a connection through their mutual, use of colours, and regret that they could not align....